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Tuesday, 30 August 2016

Blogger Johnny Void reports that when the overall benefit cap is lowered this Autumn, it will be for the third time in just five years. What does that all mean? How about, as JV writes, Hunger, Homelessness and Despair, The Stark Reality of the Benefit Cap?Of course that is not the analysis we shall be hearing trumpeted this October when BBC News reports from Conservative & Unionist Party Autumn Conference 2016. What will other political parties have to say about this third lowering of the benefit cap in five years? And if they do say anything about the benefit cap at those Autumn conferences, will the BBC report it? Oh, no! What have I done now? I've probably sown the seeds for more and more page viewings of Kwug Blog from Russia, where it seems their larger population are dead keen to seek out reports of how nasty the UK Government is to poor people within the UK. (For the past month or two, there have been about four times more page viewings of this blog from Russia than from within the UK, until my health forced me to cut back on my output — reducing the number of page viewings of this blog per week to practically zero from Russia.)Needless to say, while internal debate is potentially healthy, as a Green Party member too poor to attend party conference and very restricted by the agendas of DWP regarding how much money the law says I need to live on and what I need to declare, and the timetabling of Green Party of England & Wales Conference Arrangements Committee etc, I hope the Green Party Autumn Conference discussions about 'progressive alliance' politics do not entirely overwhelm matters of how nasty 'austerity government' is to poor people.

Sunday, 28 August 2016

By Dude Swheatie of Kwug, expressing a personal viewpoint

Reading the Wembley Matters and London Green Left blogs and observing the output of Green Party leadership hustings, it seems to me that the idea of Green Party participation in a 'Progressive Alliance' arouses a lot of tribalism within the Green Party's eco-socialist tendency Green Left and Green Party activists in general. (1)(2)(3)Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is not party-politically aligned, containing members of various political parties and none, and we come together over the common concern of supporting vulnerable people while most of us are vulnerable ourselves as individuals.Sure, there should have been more conferring with party members by the Green Party leadership before they made any pronouncements about a 'Progressive Alliance'.(4) Yet rather than condemning the other political parties, I believe that Greens including Green Left members could use the concept of a Progressive Alliance as a means of bringing those other political parties to change their ways.Those other political parties would have to make great strides toward getting Greens to stand down. In a previous council election, Brent Green Party stood down one candidate in a three-seat ward to allow space for a candidate from pressure group Keep Willesden Green.(5)Meanwhile, one of the greatest challenges for democracy is where a political party becomes so dominant for so long that its elected representatives lose any sense of connection with poor people who are so disenchanted as to become non-voters while that party uses 'regeneration' as a pathway to social exclusion. As Revd Paul Nicolson observes, while those in political power can become very detached we should not write them all off.(6)

Ultimately, a political party is a coalition. So too is a non-party-political grouping such as Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group. Co-operation as in the forming of a progressive alliance or even moving toward the formation of a progressive alliance can be a challenge. Kwug has had at least one Lib Dem activist among its members and we have not written them off for what Lib Dem MPs colluded with in a Con-Dem coalition. The standards required in forming and moving toward a progressive alliance can be a bridge whereas excessive tribalism can be a wall that shuts us out of exerting any influence. Mahatma Gandhi observed that no enemy can be thoroughly disarmed until they have become befriended.

.... We came across a ... case today, again an older guy who had been bumped off ESA and who was now forced onto JSA. He explained that he could not understand why he was being forced onto JSA when he felt he could not, in all honesty, hold down any kind of regular work, despite the fact that he would love to return to paid employment rather than being treated like a scrounger. We urged him to submit a mandatory reconsideration BEFORE he applies for JSA; as a single claimant he can be forced onto Universal Credit (UC) if he makes a new claim, but if he puts his mandy recon in first he will not be classified as a new claimant, and will thus avoid being put onto UC. Remember, if you are removed from ESA, always submit your mandy recon against that decision BEFORE you make any claim for JSA. We also advised him that once he is on JSA he can get a doctor’s line for an Extended Period of Sickness of 13 weeks....(2)

How about the menu?

The menu offers a lot more variety than bread and water

The menu offers a lot more variety than bread and water. I wonder though, do those who have no misgivings about whether they could afford to attend such a 'gala' ever pause to consider the costings of meals on £73.10 a week? How much nutrition can you get for £73.10 a week?

Thursday, 25 August 2016

Z2K is short for Zacchaeus 2000, the justice for vulnerable debtors charity that was set up by Kwug's friend and activist Revd Paul Nicolson. It has had more years of giving advice services to vulnerable people than KUWG and its caseworkers and we have frequently referred service users with cases outside of our expertise areas to Z2K.Yet just as KUWG has had to go through assessment of its processes in making funding applications, so to has Z2K with its advice services. You can read Z2K Chief Executive Officer Joanne Kennedy's blogged assessment of that assessment procedure at http://z2k.org/2016/08/assessing-our-casework-service/

Funders increasingly demand such audits of organisations that apply for extra funds to help sort out the problems caused by government systems. Would it not be great if the devisers of government systems that cause enormous problems for vulnerable people and their case workers could be subjected to nearly so much scrutiny?

I find reading bullshit from 'think tank' Reform in tandem with global accountancy corporation Accenture not good for my health but better than rolling over into an inertia of doing nothing to challenge injustice.

The Bullshit

The opening paragraph of the Reform/Accenture report 'The future of public services: digital jobcentres' reads:

Up to the job?

The financial crisis precipitated the deepest peacetime recession the UK had experienced
since the Great Depression. As the banking sector went into meltdown and lending to
businesses dried up, the economy contracted by 6 per cent in a year.1
Many lost their
jobs, but unemployment during the downturn was less acute than in other periods of
economic decline... While 10 per cent of the workforce were claiming
unemployment benefit during periods of the 1980s, the financial crisis saw this measure
of worklessness peak at 4.7 per cent. The labour market has also proved resilient in
recent years. Unemployment returned to pre-crisis levels shortly after last year’s general
election, leading the then Prime Minister David Cameron to herald a ‘jobs miracle’.(1)

Time for a response in British Sign Language:

And also in American Sign Language:

The reality, or as American English would have it, 'actuality'

In reality, benefit sanctions masked the reality of the true number of 'non-working poor'. The 'claimant count' is based on the numbers of people judged to be legitimately claiming benefits, and mass sanctions serve as a mass grave for the truth. If the DWP admitted that there were targets for the numbers of sanctions to apply as 'norms', that would undermine the perceived legitimacy of the figures cited above by Reform/Accenture.Look to what Dr David Webster has written regarding sanctions data and how sanctions are 'administered' and you will not see such a rosy picture.

Benefit sanctions: Britain's secret penal system

Benefits claimants are subjected to an 'amateurish, secret penal system which is more severe than the mainstream judicial system', writes Dr David Webster of the University of Glasgow....(2)

Years ago, companies such as Unum and Accenture under the respective guises of Unum Provident and Arthur Andersen Consulting were found guilty of fraud. Now they talk of [heavily distorted] 'data' as the solution to benefit fraud and a think tank that has 'charitable status' goes along with them!

Mass sanctions disguise reality

And on the false premises of what an investment banker turned 'welfare reform guru' — Baron Freud the Welfare Reform Minister — has said of benefit fraud levels, the State and fraudster corporations have blood on their hands on account of sanctions deaths.(3)

Mass sanctions create mass graves.

Sanctions deaths are not so numerous as the impact of fear of sanctions, as for example Kate Belgrave | Talking with people dealing with public sector cuts attests.(4) Whether benefit claimants are sanctioned or not, they are still treated by the DWP as subhuman.Kate's latest blog post is No-one believes anybody now. Not even on [Domestic Violence] issues. More stories from the jobcentre(5) Thus the DWP is in effect administering violence in a public facility on a routine and systematic basis. Two comments on that blog post affirm that the domestic violence survivor Kate accompanied and who got the authorisation she attended for would not have faired so well had Kate not accompanied her.A problem benefit claimants face regarding accompanying people to jobcentre interviews is the fear of being vicimised by the DWP, yet the motto of the Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group is, "Never attend anywhere official alone." So, please, if you have the comparative liberty to accompany people to jobcentre interviews, make the attempt. You might learn from first-hand experience witnessing how Jobcentre Plus [sic] and its associate institutions actually operate!

Tuesday, 16 August 2016

Guest blog post by Revd Paul Nicolson of Taxpayers Against Poverty

Dear all, I am nothing like as deaf as national and local government to the damage done to the health of the worst off by benefit cuts, caps and council tax causing hunger and debt. All good wishes, Paul

MEDIA NOTICE

Rev Paul Nicolson

07961 177 889

020 8376 5455

TO TOTTENHAM MAGISTRATES COURTAN APPEAL UNDER THE EQUALITY ACT 2010 DUE TO THE DISABILITY OF DEAFNESS

I will be applying to the High Court for case stated under the civil procedure rules but am unable to do so without a copy of the judgment in Nicolson v Haringey on the 4th August at the Tottenham Magistrates Court, for which I applied to you on the 4th and 9th August.

In addition to the details related to the charging of corporate overheads, and other expenditure, to council tax summons and liability order costs by Haringey Council I shall be seeking a judgment under the Equality Act 2010 on the grounds that I informed the court four times that was unable to hear Haringey's witness.

1. I asked the clerk before the case started if there was a hearing loop; she pointed at the loud speakers which, it later transpired, were not turned on. 2. I informed the judge twice while the witness was giving evidence that I could not hear her.3. The judge claimed in his judgment that everyone had heard the witness; I reminded him that I had told him twice while the witness was giving evidence that I could not hear her therefore was unable to cross examine her.

There were witnesses in the public gallery who can testify to all four protests.

Sunday, 14 August 2016

Ex UK diplomat Craig Murray now blogs largely about the UK as Vauntie Cybernat, Former Ambassador, Human Rights Activist while he is based in Russia, judging by his email address craigmurray AT mail DOT ru (1)(2)His latest blog post focuses on the disparities between how the law in the UK treats benefit claimants found guilty of fraud and how members of the Royal Family and other members of the landowning classes are treated when they engage in fraudulent activity, and is entitled The Dysfunctional United Kingdom.(3)Murray concludes:

The political class have a deliberate will not to enforce inheritance tax on the super wealthy. They have a political will not to tackle landlordism, which as it affects both residential and commercial tenants is a fundamental malaise of the British economy. Neither problem is technically difficult. The problem is that the political class as a whole are in the pockets of the super-wealthy, promote their interests and ache to join them.Which is why in the UK it is important that the threat to them posed by Corbyn is maintained, and why in Scotland it is essential that the SNP membership now push their own leadership into bold action on fundamental land reform and Independence. To call the current SNP approach to both issues desultory would be excessively polite.

Though the 'philanthropic' nature of the sourcing of the sponsorship money for Rise might be suspect, Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group has great faith in Revd Paul Nicolson and his action. Paul, like Tony Cox, has previously supported benefit claimants in their cases. Not paying Council Tax is civil disobedience and so discouraged by the establishment that Paul has been 'hauled up in front of Tottenham Magistrates Court and has yet to be sentenced. Yet however much jobcentre and disability assessment companies' security guards and management like to pretend that accompanying people to interviews is not legal, imagine the challenge to the dysfunctional United Kingdom if Craig Murray could apply the skills of a former diplomat in escorting vulnerable people to interviews and living in the UK to become liable for — and refuse to pay — Council Tax etc!

The principal subcontractor will be Atos, which Accenture chose for "its strong track record of successfully delivering IT services for the Department of Work and Pension [DWP], and with a particular focus on delivering secure online citizen self-service applications," it said in a statement.

What do

"successfully delivering IT services for the Department of Work and Pensions [DWP] and

Why electronic forms (eforms) are unsafe: A key feature of the DWP’s ambitious digitisation initiative is to shift all responsibility for entering data onto the claimant. Eforms are the DWP’s method of choice. Take e.g. Universal Credit which is designed to be claimed online. Under Universal Credit claimants have no choice but to claim through eforms. … Continue reading (5)

Disability benefit claimants initially failed to score eligibility points on their disability benefit claims forms, largely because the forms allowed too little data entry space for them to state the conditions of their eligibility properly. (That was many people's experience with claiming Employment & Support Allowance, and more recently so with Personal Independence Payments [PIP].)(6) So the cause of the claimant's unsuccessful initial application for that benefit was Atos' "successfully delivering IT services for the Department of Work and Pensions."

Green Party Work & Pensions Spokesperson Jonathan Bartley has observed that inclusion is not assimilation. (He is also a Green Party of England & Wales Leadership candidate on jobshare basis with Caroline Lucas MP.) Tottenham Magistrates Court, in failing to allow reasonable adjustments for Revd Paul Nicolson's disability in Court seems to be demonstrating an orientation toward the assimilation by conquest of disadvantaged people, rather than full inclusion.

I am also pleased to report that my finding a May 2016 press release on Sunday by way of a Google search for the American 'health insurance' company Unum helped source another new Disability News story:

Kwug with Revd Paul Nicolson, Haringey Unite Community, and Disabled People Against Cuts

Today at Tottenham Magistrates Court, members of Kilburn Unemployed Workers Group joined other supporters of Revd Paul Nicolson in his case against LB Haringey levying Council Tax on people on State Benefits.

Tottenham Magistrates Court and Haringey Council put on notice about the errors of their ways

Haringey Council's 'hounding the poor' practice, as he has argued, leads to debt-induced evictions where the Council chases people too poor to pay. His supporters today included members of Haringey Unite Community Branch, Disabled People Against Cuts, Winvisible (Women with visible and invisible disabilities) and SOAP (Speak Out Against Psychiatry). There was also a reporter from London Live News on hand to interview Revd Paul.(1) [Link to today's interview currently pending]

Revd Paul with London Live interviewer

Empathising with Revd Paul's stand, Kwuggies attending our Burnout Workshop on Tuesday 2 August signed a 'thank you' card for Revd Paul for his role as a 'great teacher'. That card was hand delivered to his Tottenham home on Wednesday afternoon and greatly appreciated by the recipient while his local authority and Tottenham Magistrates did not appreciate the basic arithmetical lessons that he was trying to teach them, nor the value of life and what debt does to people in council wards marked as being 'low birth weight capitals' of not only Britain but also the Western World.So as our friend Paul notes:(2)

Haringey taxes poorest residents of most deprived UK wards with low life expectancy & high rate of low birth-weight

HARINGEY COUNCIL TAXES

BENEFIT INCOMES OF POOREST RESIDENTS

OF UK'S MOST DEPRIVED WARDS

WITH LOW LIFE EXPECTANCY AND

HIGH RISK OF LOW BIRTH-WEIGHT.

MEDIA RELEASERev Paul Nicolson020 8376 545507961 177 889

I lost my council tax case against Haringey Council's court costs today and await a another summons to court at which the Tottenham Magistrates can jail me.
I am refusing to pay £2831.42 council tax in solidarity with and because of the damage the tax is doing to the health of​ very badly off residents of Haringey some of whom have had their income stopped by a benefit sanction.
Meanwhile Haringey council continues to tax the benefit incomes of its poorest residents, adding court costs, sending in the bailiffs, ignoring mental and physical ill health, the short life span, the low birth-weight, food and fuel poverty,in some of the most deprived wards in the UK.
The Tottenham magistrates have rubber stamped over 60,000 council tax liability orders, 100s and 1000s at a time adding court costs of £115​, against Haringey resident over the past three years on council print outs totally ignorant of their vulnerable circumstances. That adds to the mental health risks ​of ​unmanageable debt in the deprived wards on the court's doorstep ​, where average life expectancy is low and the risks of low birth-weight high. ​

I will stop protesting when Haringey stops taxing benefit incomes.

'Rubber stamping tens of thousands of Council Tax liability orders indicates that Haringey Council is not operating with due scrutiny regarding the basic well-being of the poorest LB Haringey residents. Do they care?Haringey Council continues to 'know the price of everything' in terms of the charges they levy against Council Tax debtors, and the 'value of nothing' in terms of human life of vulnerable people. Yet as an exemplary teacher, Revd Paul is clearly not giving up on such unwilling students as Haringey Council and Tottenham Magistrates Court. He exemplifies caring with his stance of continued defiance to injustice by the State.Or has Conservative & Unionist Party Government so muzzled the judiciary that they dare not make any decisions that threaten the prospects of a wholesale return to debtors' prison society?Who will report Haringey Council and Tottenham Magistrates to UN human rights investigators?

When is the next demonstration? The next lesson for those who really lack legitimate authority?

Commenting on Blog Contents

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Please note if I respond to comments it is in my Google log in — never 'Anonymous'

Commenters cause less confusion when they use their own names or pen names. A host of 'Anons' can give very mixed messages. Even if you use the technically easier 'Anonymous' button to make a comment you can still put your name at the end.

Benefits sanctioned? Take mass action!

An average of 1700 benefit clamants are sanctioned per year in each London parliamentary constituency. One of them might be writing parliamentary candidates in your polling constituency right now. How about more people who are sanctioned writing candidates in your parliamentary constituency and asking relevant questions at 'hustings' debates in your area?

Meeting structure

Helping you feel at home: We meet weekly in the Small Hall at KingsgateCC and start gathering from 3pm, attempting to start the meetings at about 3:15pm and definitely before 3:30pm.

Bring and share refreshments are included. We are not like the 'No eating or drinking on the premises' jobcentre.

The formal meetings start with firstname and what benefit we are on or a one-liner about what brings us to KUWG. (Pensioners and other allies welcome.)

We then ask for casework from those present, arrange who will help with what case, and go onto discussing campaigning leafleting and such outreach activities. We also arrange who will do the chairing or facilitating and note-taking for the following week. Rotating these roles helps minimise the risk of being dominated by one person and helps us build our skills as we share the workload.

Meetings actually finish at about 5:20pm to allow for putting tables and chairs back and leaving the kitchen facilities ready for the next group.